Month: June 2015

I’ve been doing commercial photography for more than 10 years now. When I’ve gone full time in 2007 and put up my photography studio Imagesmith I never thought I’d be doing video. In 2008 Canon released a full-frame DSLR which is capable of shooting 1080p videos. From then on we acquired additional bodies that shoot video, we also invested on motion sliders and jib cranes for that cinematic effect.

About 2-3 years ago, the aerial drone quadrocopters craze was born, from the china made ones to the reliable Dji brand. I almost invested on the Dji Inspire 1 which is fantastically looking drone, the Phantom models are less to be desired back then because of its crippled features to complete the FPV rig. During those times, I was really tempted to invest in but my tech-geek instincts said the current tech is expensive for what you get and anyway our clients are willing to rent helicopters and planes.

Forward to June 2015, I got the Phantom 3 Professional by Dji it is one of the few Phantom 3 units to arrive in the Philippines. The technology it has and price are perfect! Perfect timing so I had no excuses.

Its good to feel like a newbie again! I’ve never been too excited on a workhorse equipment since my first DSLR. During these past 3 weeks I’m getting better and better on flying the drone, I now understand its limitations and shortcomings so thats why I need to fly more and augment that. I’m now mastering the different moves (cinematic moves) that we can use at work. I just got the 2 extra batteries and now I can fly this for more than an hour.

I have used it several times already for work and practice. I’ve shot these aerial footages during a recent project in several locations in Quezon City while shooting the “100 Things To Do in Quezon City” coffee table book and during the pre-nuptial photo and video shoot in Anilao Batangas.

The weather is pretty bad right these past few days, unpredictable, hazy and windy. But once it clears up I will continue playing this exciting new work toy.

Watch the video in Full HD to see how crisp and detail the footages are, it was taken in 4K UHD and downsampled to 1080p. It is ungraded and didn’t fix shaky shots because there was nothing to fix. I’m really stoked and excited on what this thing can do. Industrial, real estate, travel and of course architectural photography and videography or even just flying it.